


Ashes of Arendelle

by Rhaeluna



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, F/F, Grimdark, Illustrations, Knight!Anna, Post-Canon, Sad, Tragedy, Tragic Romance, dark souls inspired, kind of a dark souls AU but not quite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-13 02:33:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18023129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhaeluna/pseuds/Rhaeluna
Summary: Wandering knight Anna is haunted by dreams of a queen in a forsaken kingdom and sets out to find the source.





	Ashes of Arendelle

The knight in red trudged through the valley snow, her hearing shot amidst the howling black wind. Her kneecaps creaked as she raised one foot after another through the high banks of the blizzard. Her vision was white and her sense of smell had long since faded. Frostbite wormed its way under her steel plate and nipped at her bones. There had to be a cave to light a fire in somewhere.

Her name was Anna. She’d wandered the lands of the sleeping lords for longer than she cared to remember, putting faces and failures behind her at every turn. Her chipped blade had lopped off the heads of wyverns and her shield had caught the axes of demons seeking flesh. Anna wandered in an unknown dance across lands starved and empty, the light of the world long since on its way to ash. It was a hollow life but it was all she knew. The search dragged her from everything, for nothing else in the world felt more worth doing despite the pain.

A month had passed since Anna shared words with another lucid soul and her tongue felt stony from disuse. She licked her lips against the cold but they froze again in seconds. The crags north of the old keeps were stuffed with madmen trying to keep warm, their minds rotted from the abyss of time that clawed at their feet. She’d run into them on her way up the range. By her aching desire, she'd tried to connect with them and find a comrade among their raving hordes. It was with a heavy heart that Anna ended up speaking with the edge of her blade.

So it went as the knight in red scoured the darkening Earth; derelict towns, poisonous woods, and vast nightmares were a normal occurrence. It wore her down like nothing else. Her birth was but a distant haze and the life before her wandering nought but misremembered dreams. For decades Anna searched mountain and dungeon in vain for a kindled flame of human companionship on her gruelling stroll towards an unmarked grave. 

Anna spied a hole in the blizzard and altered course towards it. Her legs seemed to move in slow motion but eventually she came upon a small hollow of rock in the cliffside. It wasn’t enough to shield her from the cold but it blocked enough wind for her to light a small fire for warmth. Her fingers nearly blue, the knight struck her tinder over a small pile of kindling and let the flickering trails of flame lick her palms. She wondered if she could die of frostbite and realized with dawning humor that she’d never actually checked.

The night came swiftly and Anna withdrew a heavy woolen blanket from her travel bag. She acquired it sometime in the distant past, far too long ago to be remembered. She liked to think she’d received it as a gift from a friend but that was just a fantasy of her longing. The light around her faded as the knight settled in and her small beacon of fire became the only light for miles. She’d crossed the high mountain pass that morning and had successfully begun her long descent in the forsaken land of Arendelle.

By all accounts, Arendelle was a cursed, dark place. It stank of death. Mad merchants spoke of it in whispers over mugs of grog, afraid to say aloud its name. Knights running errands for dark kings found intricate ways around its lands instead of risking a quicker passage straight through. There hadn’t been people there in a thousand years and the only souls who dared visit it now were the lost and the foolish. Anna considered herself to be both.

The place never would have caught her attention before. It was isolated and lonely; there was but the tiniest chance in the world its borders contained what she sought. Anna hadn’t given Arendelle a second thought until she began seeing it in her dreams. She’d been traveling through a wooded land of sun and pine where the days lasted a fortnight when her visions came. At first, Anna ignored them. Disturbing dreams were nothing new to the knight. She had seen her fair share of terrors in her time walking the Earth but these were different. Try as she might to rid herself of them, the sights returned each night upon lying down for rest. Anna saw a long abandoned castle buried in ice and snow with parapets like knives clawing at a foggy sky. She wandered endless halls seeking a pained cry with no source. 

Days passed and the dreams persisted. Soon enough Anna found the right path through the castle to the inner sanctum where she’d come face to face with a tall, white-haired spectre enthroned in its center on a great chair of ice. Her blue eyes stung like frost. They exchanged no words however the sight of the figure struck such tragedy and sadness in Anna’s breast that she suddenly awoke, her breath tight. She felt like she’d had an epiphany but she hadn’t any new information to show for it. Her heart swelled and sobbed at the state of the wraith-like woman but she couldn’t fathom the reason. Anna felt like she knew her, or she ought to know her, but such a visage would no doubt have lingered stark in her memory had that been true. Who was she and why did she keep seeing her at night? Curiosity burned in her chest.

A week passed before Anna saw the woman again. This time she was different: the woman had old, bloodied bandages wrapped around her eyes, concealing empty sockets as heavy blood dribbled from underneath and stained the cloth. Anna woke up screaming, her heart aflame with unknown loss. 

The cycle continued until, one day, Anna had turned her path towards Arendelle. She turned left at a river crossing and began the trek north into the wastes, the air like cold steel against her skin. Her dreams ceased and the knight found restful sleep once more. It was then that she realized she was being drawn towards the dead land by a strange magic and she began her quest in earnest. She had to know.

Anna grumbled to herself and rustled through her pack for a bar of rations. She stoked the little flame she’d cultivated in the darkness of the storm, afraid that her joints might freeze in place. According to the legends Arendelle was once a prosperous land of justice and plenty. It had been ruled in its heyday by two sister queens, the last of a long line of royals who claimed to have descended from the long extinct ice giants. Tragedy struck when one queen died and the other lost control of her magic in despair. Arendelle drowned overnight in eternal winter and countless lives were dragged into the dark, snuffed from existence. The land had remained in shadow ever since.

Perhaps a wraith of the old kingdom was haunting her, Anna thought as her eyelids slowly closed. She held the blanket tighter to herself A wraith with no purpose, no light, and only anguish of the past tethering them to consciousness. They were quite a pair, she and her wraith. 

 

\---

 

When Anna awoke she was half buried in snow, her fire invisible under the white expanse. She shrugged the weight of it off and stood up, shaking out her blanket and returning it to her pack. The blizzard had ended for the time being and a clear, sunny sky greeted her weary eyes. The air smelled fresh and the knight inhaled deeply of it. She was in luck; it would be smooth sailing for as long as the weather held. Anna limbered up for the day, grabbed another ration, and set out down the snow-covered trail.

“Greetings!” A raspy voice said from behind her.

Anna whirled, drawing her blade in a shriek of steel and leveling the tip at the creature’s neck. She stopped short of bisecting it, willing to give the thing a half-second chance to justify its continued existence.

“Ah! I mean you no harm!” It said, cowering behind thin, stick-like arms. It was an animated snowman, and it chanced another look at Anna when she didn’t immediately slay it. “Please, do not hurt me. I am Olaf and I like hugs!” 

Anna sighed and lowered her blade. Just another isolation-mad being wandering the wastes. She’d met many on her journey and of them all, a snowman was easily the least threatening. She did wonder for a moment whether slicing it in half would actually kill it or if she’d need to go to greater lengths should it turn out to be a schemer or unpleasant company. 

“Oh thank you, thank you!” The creature said, its void-like black eyes shining with glee, “may I hug you, stranger?”

“No.” Anna sheathed her sword and turned back towards the mountain trail.

Much to Anna’s chagrin, Olaf kept pace despite wobbling along next to her on stumpy legs of snow. “What’s your name?” It asked, “what brings you to sunny, sweet Arendelle?”

“If you become a pest I’m liable to cut you down, demon.” Anna glared at the thing and laid her hand on the pommel of her blade for emphasis.

Olaf laughed and waved its stick-arms before its wide, undulating mouth. “Oh, you might try! You might try! Many have!” It giggled, “you’ll find it quite difficult I’m afraid. Mother built me to last!” The creature slapped its snowball abdomen in satisfaction. 

Anna raised an eyebrow. “Your mother?” Her heart panged. What must it be like to have a mother? She’d always wondered. How dare the hateful creature before her flaunt its providence in her face? Perhaps she ought to throw it over the cliffside after all. She hadn’t time to dally and soon the blizzard would return. 

“Yes, my mother,” the thing repeated as Anna picked up the pace of her steps, “my mother the Queen, Queen Elsa of Arendelle.” Anna stopped. The glacial silence of the abandoned snowscape dripped in the air. Olaf caught up and stopped next to her, its smile radiant. 

“The Queen? Fool, Arendelle has been empty for a thousand years,” Anna said.

Olaf frowned and rubbed its little stick hands together as a child might. “It’s true. Everyone is gone; everyone except our Queen. If only the people would wake up...they spend all their time sleeping still under the ice. The butcher, the cartographer, the baker. They’re nought but bones now and still they sleep.” Olaf shook its head. “It makes mother sad. She’s been sad for a very long time.”

Anna’s guard faltered and she felt her throat constrict. “Little creature,” she said, “does this Queen Elsa have long, braided white hair and a bloodied blindfold over her eyes?” 

Olaf nodded. “Yes, yes! Have you been to visit her? She gives such good hugs.” 

Anna grimaced. What was happening? Her mind raced, turning the circumstances of her arrival over in her thoughts. It had to be coincidence. She’d never heard of any Queen Elsa or known what she might have looked like. Could she be the source of the magic drawing her towards the castle? “Tell me, Olaf, do you know the way to Queen Elsa?” Perhaps the creature could be of some use after all. 

Olaf beamed. “Oh, would you like to visit her? She hasn’t received visitors in so very long!”

It was her only lead. She didn’t actually know the way to the castle from her dreams, she was just following the main road until another, better choice presented itself. Such as it was with wandering. 

“Let’s go then,” said Anna. Even if Olaf was mad, leading her to the Queen would no doubt be the same as leading her to the castle. If Elsa was actually long dead, as Anna suspected, then at least she’d be in the right spot to continue her inquiry.

Olaf’s smile turned sour. “Wait, not so fast! Just a minute ago you threatened to kill me!” He crossed his arms. “How can I be sure you mean Queen Elsa no harm?”

Anna clenched and unclenched her left fist. “I promise not to harm her.” 

Olaf shook his head. “Apologize for threatening me.” 

Anna burned. She grit her teeth behind her mouth covering and contemplated threatening him again with violence. She knew it wouldn’t work but it might make her feel better. “I apologize for my threats against your life.” She took a deep breath, “please lead me to your mother. I am on a quest.”

Olaf nodded in approval and darted ahead, his misshapen legs betraying his speed. “Wonderful, wonderful, a quest! Let’s go, I’m sure you’ll love her!” He stopped suddenly and turned back to the knight, “what may I call you?”

Anna trudged after him through the fresh powder. “Anna,” she replied. 

“Oh!” Olaf paused, then grinned. “What a lovely name!” 

 

\---

 

The path to Arendelle Castle was littered with broken stone bridges and roaring rivers that flooded over the path. Anna and Olaf traveled by day, sometimes on the trail and sometimes off, their eyes always ahead of them. A night passed, then another. Olaf didn’t sleep it seemed, instead spending his evenings pacing around cave entrances, singing at the stars, or having in-depth one sided conversations with pine trees. It kept Anna from sleep more often than not and it took the brunt of her willpower not to renew her plans to behead her guide and toss his two halves off opposite sides of the mountain. 

They ran into wights and direwolves a few times. During each encounter Olaf lost a bit of his body and Anna gained another half pound of blood caked onto her armor. It was revolting to watch the little snowman pick up new snow and pack it back onto his body or find black stones to replace lost eyes.

“Anna, I can’t climb!” He’d yelled as he attempted to scale a tree. Anna parried the cold blade of a wight’s axe and sent a heel flying into its sternum, knocking it on its back. She growled and darted towards the pine, hefting the little snow being up into the branches. She’d taken a knife in the back for it.

When the fights had concluded, Olaf would apologize to the corpses and wish them restful slumber. The longer this went on, the more worried Anna became that she was being lead to her doom by an insane winter construct with no idea where he was going. She’d put far too much stock into his ability after only knowing him for a minute or two but she couldn’t turn back now. She lagged behind his skipping, her blade heavy in its scabbard, until eventually they created a great hill and the castle finally came into view. 

Anna couldn’t help but smile. It was nearly rubble and its towers were long collapsed and frozen under ice. There might have been a gate at one point but it was buried under rock and snow. The main hall, however, was perfectly intact on the outside and encased in a layer of bright blue ice that prevented it from breaking down over time.

It was the same as in her dreams. A swell of hope and loss filled her insides. The emotions threatened to bubble over as tears but the knight shoved them back down. 

“That’s where Queen Elsa is?” 

Olaf smiled up at Anna with pride. “That’s her house! She never leaves.”

“Mm.” One way or another, Anna would have answers soon. She felt giddy, overjoyed. The feelings fluttered inside her like winged demons in love. 

She approached the castle town slowly, wary of any beasts that might be lurking beside ruined homes. The structures were little more than bits of metal and stone jutting up from troughs of snow, but it was more than enough to hide behind. The knight was nearly up to the old town gate when she began seeing the corpses. They were strewn about in a mess of limbs and torsos dressed in bits of plate armor, some more intact than others. The few frozen heads she found looked human, looked young, even, but it was impossible to really tell. Anna knelt before one and began prodding at the icy skin. 

“Oh,” Olaf said with a frown, “they wanted to see mother, too.”

Anna gripped the hilt of her blade. “What happened?”

“She thought them false.”

Anna looked up and scanned the scene. It was impossible to count them all. Some figures were barely bodies at all and had been reduced to bones strewn next to broken armor. And of that armor she was shocked to see both relatively recent styles lying next to blades and shields from dynasties hundreds of years apart. She could catalogue the passage of time in their remains. 

“Olaf, how long has Elsa been Queen?”

Olaf thought for a moment. “A very, very long time. Thousands of moons, maybe more!”

Anna frowned and considered turning back. If she diced up Olaf into enough pieces she’d get a head start should Elsa try to run her down. Maybe she could put the whole thing behind her like a bad dream. She couldn’t, of course, no matter the danger; she knew herself better than that. The only thing left to her in the world was her search and without that where would she be? There was only so long Anna could wander aimlessly looking for friends before she fell face forward and didn’t bother to get back up. 

Anna drew sword as they approached the castle proper. Massive blue gates of ice stood barely open at the entrance with enough space for her to pass. From the look of the snow on the ground around them, they’d been hanging ajar for decades.

“Hurry, this way!” Olaf bounded through the gates and up a flight of icy stairs. Anna followed, glancing to either side. She recognized the layout. The floor was glassy and slick and Anna did her best to maintain her balance as she followed Olaf down the familiar passages. “Come on, come on!” The castle was silent as death and every step closer to the inner sanctum made Anna’s heart burn. How? How could it be? 

They turned the last corner. Anna’s breath caught tight as she entered the massive throne room. Pillars of ice dove from the high ceiling and sank into the ground where great shards of glacial ice erupted from the floor. Soft flakes danced down from above in a steady rhythm around a thin, tall figure slouched in an the throne. She had long, braided white hair and a bloody bandage over her eyes, just as Anna knew she would.

The very sight of her constricted Anna’s throat in a vice grip and sent a strange pulse humming through her thoughts. A deep, cataclysmic love overwhelmed her. A love that had lasted an eternity, a love that had been simmering in the back of her mind for longer than she’d been alive. A sinful love, a dark, possessive love. As it stabilized, Anna felt the torment that it brought. Despair, anxiety, heartbreak, death. She clutched her chest with her free hand while her breathing came short and ragged. She’d never met this woman in her life but she knew her like she’d found a missing part of her own soul. It felt like finding water in a desert that spanned the world. The knight wept.

A moment passed and Elsa did not move. Olaf watched Anna wipe her tears in silence, a smile on his face. As her senses returned, Anna realized that something was, in fact, moving in the eternally still room. Crawling on the throne just above the Queen was another snow construct similar to Olaf. Anna’s eyes went wide as she realized its face was nearly identical to her own save for dark, empty black stones where her eyes and mouth ought to be. She gripped her fingers tight around her sword. A sinking feeling darkened in Anna’s heart amidst the tempest of emotion scraping the inside of her ribs.

“Elsa, Elsa!” Olaf said, “I’m back and look, you have a guest! Isn’t that wonderful?”

Elsa remained still as a corpse and Anna wondered with grit teeth whether she was even still alive. The snow construct above her writhed like a snake and whispered into Elsa’s ear, its voice was identical to Anna’s own.

“You there,” Anna said to the Queen with enough volume to fill the chamber, “have we met?”

Silence. Only the construct spoke in a hushed whisper, its mimicry of a voice like a curse to Anna’s ears. She ought to kill it. 

“Oh, yes, have you?” Olaf said.

“I know not,” Anna seethed, “but her creature there has a face identical to my own.”

“What? R-really?” 

It was beyond her capability to know the reason but her heart begged her to make contact with the deathly Queen. She knew her, she had to, but why couldn’t she remember? In a moment of impulsiveness, Anna reached up and pulled down the cloth hiding her face. She shook out her head, emphasizing her two long, red braids of hair. “See?” Anna asked the room.

Olaf balked at the sight of her. “Anna!” He cried as he dove in for a hug. He’d wrapped himself around the knight’s leg before she could stop him. “Queen Anna! It’s you, I knew you weren’t dead! Where did you go? Why did you go?”

Queen Elsa’s head twitched and the voice of the construct became hurried in her ear. Anna sucked in air. That’d done it, and with it she had her answers but still so many questions. Everything she’d known about herself was in question as her whole world shook in place. They knew her face. Somehow, both the immortal Ice Queen before her and the strange creature knew her face and longed for her.

“I’ve been seeing you in my dreams,” the knight said to Elsa, “in strange visions. Was that you?”

Elsa stirred where she sat, her neck stiff from disuse. She looked around the room, unable to find Anna without eyes. “A-Anna?” Her voice sounded like stone being cloven in two. “My Anna?” 

“Elsa, it's amazing, look--” Olaf began but Anna silenced him with a glance. He covered his mouth with his tiny hands and squeaked.

Anna lifted the cloth protecting her face back up over her nose. “You were in my dreams, dreams that wouldn’t stop. They haunted me until I came here. I ask again, was that you?”

Elsa frowned. “I know not of what you speak. I have no power over dreams.” The Queen flicked her wrist and the Anna-like snow construct perched upon her throne shrieked and shattered into loose snowflakes. “You have Anna’s voice. The timber matches to the note, unlike these facsimiles I create.” She cocked her head and Anna felt her sight boring into her heart even from behind her blindfolded, bloodied sockets. “You are another one, then?” 

Anna shuffled where she stood, her hand still tight on her sword. “I don’t know what I am, but my heart weeps with love for you and this forsaken kingdom. I am haunted by it: why? You must tell me if you know!”

Elsa snorted. “What is your name?”

“Anna!”

The Queen rumbled. “Olaf, you dare bring this interloper into my lonely court? Have you gone truly mad?” The Queen’s blind gaze found Olaf and the tiny snowman shrank before her presence.

“I-I’m sorry, my Queen,” he stammered, “she is Anna! I see it in her face, her eyes!”

“No.” The room shuddered and Anna took a step back. Her emotions churned within her like rolling earth. “No, you cannot be. A hundred years have passed since the last convincing betrayer appeared at my gates heralding Anna’s perfect voice. They sought to trick me and thought me foolish in my blindness, and you are no different.”

Pain opened Anna’s heart like a knife wound. “No! I’m not--Elsa! I’m not tricking you!” The name rolled off her tongue as if it were her own.

With a sound like cracking ice, Elsa stood from her throne. “So all the fools have said.” She cracked her wrists and spires of ice erupted from her forearms and shoulders. Anna crouched, her eyes wide. With a flick of Elsa’s arm, a wall of ice tore up through the floor and covered the exit. With another, a rod formed in her hand from a flurry of magic and molded into the rough shape of a horrible, jagged greatsword. 

“Elsa, no!” Olaf cried as he ran to hide behind a spire of ice. “Please, please your majesty!” 

Anna lowered in her stance, the tip of her blade leveled with Elsa’s throat. Warm tears dribbled down her cheeks as she wrestled with her heart and tried to reign it in. Everything hurt and still she knew not why.

Elsa stepped forward and slammed down her heel. Two great, icy heads manifested behind her and bellowed at Anna, their teeth glistening like bloodied knives. Anna didn’t want to fight Queen Elsa, to fight the strange woman she’d just met but also felt for all the world she’d once loved more passionately than humans ever could. Her thoughts felt like fire. Why, why? Anna coughed and a thundering pulse rang deep in her mind.

The vision came to her in flashes. Anna saw herself placing light kisses on Elsa’s forehead, her eyes bright, unscarred, and deep blue. She saw her in court dealing justice, on the battlefield leading an army of thousands, and in bed with their fingers laced together. The images staggered her and for a moment Anna lost her balance and nearly dropped her sword.

“I tire of you,” Elsa said. She raised her blade before her chest. The great heads gnashed behind her.

Anna flinched. Then there wasn’t time to feel anymore. Elsa flicked her wrist and the two heads hurtled through the air screaming like glaciers cracking over the ocean. Olaf screamed and Anna dove forward, rolling under the first head and cutting up through the middle of the second. Its two halves slammed into the throne room wall and exploded into icy dust. 

Anna wrenched herself to her feet and charged toward Elsa. The Queen met her sword to sword, ice crackling against steel and ringing throughout the chamber. Elsa parried and lunged, nearly impaling Anna. The knight spun with the Queen’s momentum and swiped at her neck, barely missing her jugular.

The remaining head slammed into Anna’s side and exploded into snow and shards of ice, tossing the knight ten feet into the air. She came down hard on her side and her ribs howled under the weight of the impact. Anna swore. No time to think. Love, hate, loss; none of it mattered when trying not to die. Two of the flying head’s teeth were stuck in the flesh of her arm. 

Elsa flicked her wrist and two more heads appeared. They charged again and Anna scraped herself to her feet, darting across the throne room and dropping to the floor just as they were about to hit her. She raced for Elsa but the Queen threw up her hand and a storm of icy shards shot from the ground. They clipped Anna’s arms, her legs. Three shards, like spears, lodged themselves in her stomach and twisted. 

Anna howled and dropped; her face landed in a puddle of blood. She heard the two massive heads flying at her before she saw them. The knight grit her teeth and pushed up from the ground. With two sure swings she cleaved the heads in two as they passed, their halves colliding with the far wall. She stepped into a run without losing her momentum and charged. The Queen raised her hand to summon more ice shards but Anna stopped dead where she stood and hurtled her sword through the air. It shot through Elsa’s casting hand, nearly splitting it in two. The Queen roared and clutched her bleeding palm. 

Anna dove in and grabbed one of the loose shards of ice. Elsa swung as she approached but Anna dodged and raised her arm to plunge the makeshift weapon into the Queen’s immortal heart. She was a second too slow. 

Elsa sidestepped the blow and kneed Anna hard in the gut, pushing one of the icicles in her stomach deeper into her abdomen. She coughed blood. Her vision went black and she fell like a stone. Her head cracked against the icy floor. Another pulse, another flash. Anna saw Elsa kneeling to be coronated, a crown over her head. She saw her smile as the first rays of summer light dawned on a dark morning. She saw herself marrying her, saw herself carrying her sister’s child. Anna vomited blood as she opened her eyes again.

“No, please Elsa, please no!” Olaf cried as he came running forward.“Don’t do it, don’t!”

Anna barely heard him. She writhed on the ground and felt her consciousness take a step back from her body. She felt ready to burst and when she finally did she screamed. 

The memories came like a torrent of rain. Playing with Elsa as a child, discovering the depth of their love in journals, building Olaf, running the kingdom, sharing wine over dinner, cuddling in front of a fire then dying over, and over, and over again. The pain of a thousand moons crippled her. She’d lived a hundred lifetimes over a thousand years in her attempts to find Elsa again. Each and every time she’d tried to return with her body born anew, Elsa had called her a liar and slain her before throwing her carcass out into the snow like she were carrion.

Anna remembered the last time she’d ever held Elsa’s hands in her first life. Her beautiful Ice Queen sat by her side looking untouched by age while Anna lie bedridden with enough wrinkles for several elderly women. A small circle of candles surrounded them and shimmered against her sister’s streaks of tears. The air smelled of chocolate and incense. Anna smiled and Elsa bent down to kiss her withered lips. Anna faded as the candles winked out one by one and the room was filled with frost. 

Queen Anna the Frost Knight died but the fire in her soul burned ever onward. She returned anew, struggling to find her way with the same kindled flame as before burning in the cavern of her heart. It shone brightly no matter how many times Elsa’s cold blade slit her throat and Anna felt its warmth lap against her cheek. 

She slammed back into her body, the weight of a thousand years heavy in her chest like iron. The knight heaved and choked as another glut of blood escaped her throat. Her vision blurred at the edges and she smelled the tang of fresh viscera all about her. When she finally focused, she found that Olaf was standing between her and Elsa’s sword.

“Elsa please, it’s Anna, it’s Anna! You can have her back, Elsa!” 

“Silence, wretched thing!” Elsa shrieked, “Or I shall flay you too!”

Anna grunted and pushed herself off the ground, silencing the Queen and her child. Their child. Oh Olaf, Anna thought, I’m so sorry. 

“You can still walk?” Elsa asked, incredulous. 

Anna snickered as she cradled her bleeding stomach with one hand. Her balance was tenuous at best and her head lolled on her neck. “Elsa, please,” she said softly, “it’s me. It’s me, Elsa. We promised each other we’d never be apart, remember?” It had been so clear that day, the sky like an open canvas. “Remember the peak of the mountain? Remember our ceremony?” 

“Anna! Anna, it is you! I knew it!” Olaf exclaimed. 

Elsa stilled. Her brow furrowed with rage. “How dare you speak of my Anna with such familiarity! Where did you learn such secrets?”

Anna sighed and stepped forward, seconds from toppling over. She reached out her hands to settle them on Elsa’s sides, right where she always liked them to be. The Queen shivered under her touch and Anna remembered the feeling of home as she rest her forehead against her wife’s sternum. She counted the breaths, and for a long moment there was silence in the throne room of forsaken Arendelle.

“I’m sorry I was gone so long this time,” Anna said in a whisper.

Elsa shook her head, and Anna looked up to see the fabric around her eyes darken with fresh blood. “You sound so much like my Anna,” she said, “and your touch…” Her voice trembled.

“It’s me, Elsa.” Anna closed her eyes. “I promise.” 

The Queen reached down and tilted Anna’s chin up to look into her eyeless sockets. “I could cry with bliss were that true.” Anna opened her mouth to speak but Elsa’s lips found her mouth, kissing her with a weary, broken kind of love. Anna’s breath caught and fed the firestorm in her heart.

The relief lasted but a moment before Elsa had Anna by the fabric of her scarf and was pushing the icy blade of her greatsword up through the knight’s sternum. The air left her chest and she struggled against Elsa’s mouth but found no purchase. She heard Olaf screaming her name distantly as her vision went dark and her chest emptied of blood. Elsa’s lips moved firmly against her own long after she’d lost the strength to move.

I’ll see you again soon, Anna thought, and then she was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [Pankite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pankite/pseuds/Pankite) and [Ice Wolf/Drake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrakePendragon) for beta-ing!
> 
> This fic is heavily inspired by Dark Souls but is not an actual Dark Souls AU because I don't feel like I'm knowledgeable enough of the lore to make it quite right as one. I started writing this because I saw the [video that Drawfee did where they drew Elsa as a Darks Souls boss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXGuWTUhGOA) and I simply couldn't help myself and had to write my own version.
> 
> Thanks for reading, cheers! <3


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